Afforestation Hardly Reduce Carbon Emissions: Study

Monday, 20 June 2011 18:45

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Proposal to adapt Afforestation is not really solving the problem of Global warming, according to new published study. Earlier in the Kyoto Protocol, nations had signed the climate treaty to give rise the Afforestation. Afforestation was the only solution at that time to cut carbon emissions. This adaptation is actually thinning the entire issue instead of reducing Carbon dioxide ratio or emissions cut.

Under Afforestation policy (climate-change treaty) it’s mentioned that forests are "sinks" that soak up carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis. But recently new study in scienfic circle, which says even huge conversion of land to forestry, have only brought slight benefit against the greenhouse-gas problem. Because forests take decades to grow up and CO is a long-lasting molecule, able to prowl for centuries in the atmosphere.Another reason cited in the report says forests, even as they absorb greenhouse gas, are darker than croplands and thus absorb more solar heat — and in high latitudes, this may even result in net warming.

Less than 50 years modeled program, researchers used a Canadian programme called CanESM1 that simulated the impacts on land, sea and air if Earth's surface temperature rose by some 3.0° Celsius by 2100 compared to 1850. Even if all the cropland in the world were afforested, this would reduce the warming by only 0.45° C by a timescale of 2081-2100, according to the study published in the Journal of Nature Geoscience.

Study further says 50% Afforestation may brake it by an even tinier 0.25° C. Both scenarios are, of course, outrageously idealistic because of the need to grow food. Practically, 50% Afforestation would require at least a doubling in crop yield to feed the entire human population because half of the crop area would be taken out of use.

Due to certain failures in Afforestation policy, deforestation today accounts nearly 20-30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions on global scale. Mitigation cannot only solve the problem of global warming, since it needs attention from keen segments especially industrial one. Regular transforms in weather indicate the ecological changes took placed in last four decades. If it is failed to address the global concern then what else? It seems plantation merely helps to reduce the carbon emissions.